The present invention relates animal identification tags. More specifically, the present invention relates to electronic animal identification tags that are resistant to tampering.
The ability of a rancher to identify an individual animal within his herd has always been important. The ear tag has long been the preferred device for identifying individual animals.
Conventional ear tags are usually plastic, with an alphanumeric number stamped or printed on the tag in a conspicuous manner. The tags are typically attached to the ear of each animal by clipping or otherwise permanently securing the tag so that it remains attached to the animal during its life. Animal movement, health, weight, and other characteristics are thereby tracked by the number associated with the animal via the ear tag.
As worldwide concerns regarding food safety and the proper administration of medicines to food animals have grown, so has the technology to verify the health and medical histories of individual animals. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,961,494, to Hogan is directed to an animal syringe which automatically places a mark of ink on an animal proximal to the location of an injection. This invention prevents accidental over-vaccination of animals and makes it easier to verify that (a) the animals have received the necessary injections, and (b) the injections were given in the proper part of the anatomy.
A significant expansion of the marking syringe technology is currently commercially available as the Vac-Trac Verification System (xe2x80x9cVTVSxe2x80x9d), marketed by AgEcom, Inc., of Marietta, Ga. The VTVS (pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/477,262) teaches a marking syringe having the ability toxe2x80x94upon actuationxe2x80x94automatically read and record the identity of the animal receiving the injection. The VTVS utilized a receiver to read the unique signal transmitted by a transmitter incorporated into the ear tag on the injected animal. The identity of the animal and the occurrence of the injection are then transferred to a computerized database for review, analysis and verification purposes, among others.
Despite these quantum advances in tools for verifying important information relating to the production of food animals, an unscrupulous rancher may still find ways to circumvent these systems and detrimentally effect the integrity of the data and the wholesomeness of the animals. One such avenue of potential circumvention relates to re-use or misuse of the electronic ear tag. If a rancher can remove an ear tag and attach it to another animal, the validity of the data is compromised.
Accordingly, there is a need for an animal identification tag (xe2x80x9cAITxe2x80x9d) that is resistant to misuse.
There is a further need for an AIT that will, upon an attempt at misuse, have more than one failure aspect to prevent successful misuse.
There is yet another need for an AIT possessing the above-desired characteristics that demonstrates improved performance in the transmission of animal identification data.
These and other shortcomings relating to electronic animal identification are satisfied by the present invention. The present invention is a tamper-proof electronic animal identification tag comprising an antenna card carrying an antenna and a stud carrying a data transmission chip.
The antenna card defines an opening therethrough have at least one antenna contact connected to the antenna. The stud has a stud body, a stud head, and a stud shaft. The stud body carries a data transmission chip electrically connected to antenna contact points.
Importantly, the stud head is unidirectionally flexible to allow a single insertion of the stud head through the opening in the antenna card. The single insertion of the stud aligns and electrically connects the antenna to the data transmission chip and prevents the stud head from being removed from the antenna card.